Hello Debian/KDE users (and packagers, but I bet packagers are subscribed to kde-distro-packagers),
JFYI, so if you use Debian Sid and Intel and get crashes, you may try the work-around provided below. I still run SNA with Debian Sid. And I did not get crashes. I just found some screen flickering after I think upgrade to most recent mesa 10.6.3-1 in PlaneShift MMORPG game. But nothing very serious. Thanks, Martin ---------- Weitergeleitete Nachricht ---------- Betreff: Serious bug in the Intel graphics stack Datum: Mittwoch, 5. August 2015, 11:53:04 MartinVon: Sandsmark <martin.sandsm...@kde.org> An: kde-distro-packag...@kde.org Kopie: kde-de...@kde.org Hi, wonderful people! This mail is primarily aimed at package maintainers in various distributions, but I've CCed kde-de...@kde.org as well to raise more awareness of this in general. TL;DR ===== I'd like to draw your attention to a pretty serious bug that is leading to massive amount of crashes for users of Plasma (and other applications using OpenGL), provide a workaround and ask kindly for you to help counteract some of the misdirected bad reputation. OVERVIEW ======== It seems to have been semi-recently introduced, so it doesn't seem to affect distributions without some older versions of the Intel graphics driver stack. I haven't been able to track down exactly which version introduced it, so it would be appreciated if some of you could chime in with the version of the Intel graphics stack you have and whether you are affected by this bug. Since the backtrace ends in mesa, the bug is currently tracked in the mesa bug tracker here: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86281 This bug is for the crashes in the Plasma shell, it is now resolved as 'upstream': https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=349519 It also affects many other applications using OpenGL, like Kodi, mpv and even Gwenview: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=350340 RESULTS ======= This is starting to put Plasma 5 in an unjustified and really bad light, even I myself thought Plasma 5 was just buggy and "not ready", before I actually dug into the issue. If you follow various social media you will find a ton of people talking about how buggy and unstable Plasma 5 is, and every time I have engaged them to figure out what is happening with them it is that Intel bug. As I mentioned above it seems to have been introduced pretty recently, which is also a problem because distributions who ship Plasma 5 usually also ship newer versions of other things like the Intel driver. And because it affects pretty much every application using OpenGL, which more and more Qt5 based applications use because of QtQuick, many other KDE applications ported to Qt5 now also get a reputation of being unstable and unfinished. WORKAROUND ========== A workaround is simply to switch back to the older UXA acceleration method from the current default SNA method in the intel DDX. One way to do this is to put the following in e. g. /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf: Section "Device" Identifier "Intel Graphics" Driver "intel" Option "AccelMethod" "uxa" EndSection I found this workaround in a forum post on the Manjaro forum by Philip Müller, the Manjaro manager and leader who also used to work with me ChakraOS. An awesome guy, and all thanks for this workaround should be directed at him. My recommendation is that distributions apply this workaround, or downgrade or hold back upgrading the Intel graphics driver stack (IMHO the first solution is the best). I have reached out to the Intel developers, and was able to both make them aware of the seriousness and allowed to raise the importance of the bug. Until the bug is resolved and a patch is available and/or there has been a new release of the Intel graphics stack the workaround should be added as soon as possible. COMMUNICATION ============= Lastly I would greatly appreciate it if distributions could inform their users about how this bug affects Plasma 5. The early KDE 4 releases got a lot of bad press because of regressions and being a bit unstable in general, and while people might argue whether it was justified, people are now comparing the Plasma 5 release to that. I'm not a Plasma developer myself, but considering how much time and effort they have spent to make Plasma 5 stable to avoid getting similar bad press as KDE 4, this is in my opinion extremely unfortunate. Please excuse my lack of brevity. -- Martin Sandsmark >> Visit http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-devel#unsub to unsubscribe << ------------------------------------------------------------- -- Martin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-kde-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/2385117.ChqyZjiIfK@merkaba
